On Wednesday, Eman Al-Obeidi, the woman who attempted to tell foreign journalists of her abuse and rape by regime forces but was taken away by security, appeared on camera in a CNN interview. The interview was arranged by Saadi Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, but transmission was held up for 18 hours by Libyan officials who wanted to review the tape. The video --- unaltered, according to CNN --- was finally transmitted yesterday afternoon.

The Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) international solidarity network joins other human rights organizations and civil society groups calling for the Libyan authorities to immediately release 29 year-old lawyer and defender of women’s human rights, Iman Al-Obeidi. We also demand that those who have allegedly subjected her to a violent sexual assault, and false imprisonment, be brought to trial following a thorough and independent investigation. On Saturday 26 March, Al-Obeidi approached a group of foreign reporters in a hotel in Tripoli, and in a state of considerable distress, she told them she had been repeatedly raped by Muammar Gaddafi’s militiamen. In an effort to silence her and in front of rolling television cameras Al-Obeidi was attacked and dragged away by government officials. Al-Obeidi is now facing criminal charges herself, according to a government spokesman. Her parents say their daughter is being held hostage at the Libyan leader's compound in Tripoli.

WAF is deeply concerned about the fate of Iman Al Obeidi, the Libyan woman who tried to expose rape as a war crime by telling her own story and that of her friends to the international press in the Rixos Hotel, Tripoli, on March 26th 2011. Since then she has been detained and then slandered on Libyan TV, and various contradictory stories have been told about her to the international press. She is now herself accused of slander.

The Libyan woman who burst into a Tripoli hotel to tell western reporters she had been raped by Muammar Gaddafi's militiamen is now facing criminal charges herself, a government spokesman said. Iman al-Obeidi was detained on Saturday after she entered the capital's Rixos al-Nasr hotel and told journalists she had been beaten and repeatedly raped by 15 troops at a checkpoint. With TV cameras rolling, she was tackled by waitresses, security men and government minders and dragged away struggling. At least two journalists were beaten or punched in the fracas.

In a bare, shabby side room in Benghazi's central courthouse, the hub of pro-democracy Libyan operations, Salwa Bugaighis talks animatedly, hardly flinching as gunshots ring out from the raucous crowds outside. They, like her, are in a mood that veers between celebration and defiance to anxiety. They flood the area of the seafront, which is littered with boards displaying caricatures of the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and stalls selling souvenirs since the eastern part of the country was liberated on February 20.